Looking back on the books published in 2016, we’ve compiled a list of 99 of the best, most-talked about – or quite simply our favourite – reads. Why the NP99 and not 100? Because that last spot is reserved for the one we forgot. You’ll think of it soon. You can find a complete list of the NP99, ranked, here.

98

Though the cowboy is an out-sized figure in our cultural imagination, some of Luis Fabini’s photographs manage to do them one better. Documenting the cowboys and gauchos (among other names) from Chile to Canada, Fabini and Wade Davis produce a breathtaking photo book of cowboys, horses and their relationship with the land.

97

Normally a publishing memoir is a little too inside-baseball for the average … baseball fan. But in the case of Robert Gottlieb, a lot of the bench players are still household names. John Cheever, Michael Crichton, Nora Ephron, Toni Morrison and many more populate this personal history of the literary scene in New York and around the world.

96

Part of the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, Margaret Atwood’s version of The Tempest takes place not on a remote island, but in a town very much like Stratford, Ontario. It’s a caper that mixes the duplicity of the Bard’s play with the crueler politics of a theatre company (and maybe a little bit of Noises Off).

94

What happens when a sacrificial lamb starts to believe that he’s an underdog destined for glory? Noah Richler’s memoir of running for parliament in Toronto is a darkly humorous story of accidental political ambition.

93

A columnist at another paper recently said of Gilmore Girls, “Let’s not pretend it was My So-Called Life.” We concur. Soraya Roberts is a tremendous chronicler of pop culture and her history of MSCL puts it in its proper context.

92

When Drew Hayden Taylor couldn’t get a science-fiction anthology by Native writers off the ground, he decided to write a collection himself. The stories in Take Us to Your Chief play on classic SF themes, with one of them being germane to the experience of indigenous cultures: contact.

91

Buddy is a dog and Earl is a hedgehog and they are friends on their second adventure and they have no time for your concern – especially Earl. Related news: requests for pet hedgehogs up 1000 per cent.

90

The Conjoined, Jen Sookfong Lee (ECW, 300 pp; $18.95)

Crime is universal, involving all cultures and every part of society. Jen Sookfong Lee uses a cold case to explore Vancouver’s cross-cultural relations in The Conjoined, a novel additionally informed by the author’s own experience working in social services.

89

But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, Chuck Klosterman (Blue Rider Press, 288 pp; $35)

Klosterman’s newest cultural meditation posits that the way we understand the world now is not how it will be understood in the future (nor is how we see our time now the way it will be remembered) and wonders aloud which of the things we universally agree on today will be profoundly wrong tomorrow.

88

Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It, Larry Olmsted (Algonquin Books, 336 pp; $41.50)

The main thrust of Olmsted’s book is how to identify all the ways you’re being played for a sucker at the grocery store and in restaurants (e.g. 100 per cent on a label often refers to just one ingredient), but the silver lining is that once you’re informed, you’ll have a much better appreciation for the real thing – and will be better equipped to get it.

87

Flannery, Lisa Moore (Groundwood Books, 256 pp; $18.95)

The first young adult novel from Giller Prize finalist Lisa Moore, Flannery is notable for flirting with the magic common in young adult literature, but then abandoning it for a real teenage protagonist and the understanding that imagination is an important part of everyday life, not just an escape from it.

86

It’s fun to ridicule things that are ridiculous, such as the assumptions faced by women during the Victorian era (masturbation is fatal, but Victorian-style, so the effects linger, like consumption?). But after the laughter, Oneill’s book will make you look askance at many of the attitudes that persist today.

85

Based on his own experience as an ER surgeon on a western air force base in Afghanistan, Patterson’s novel is a fictional snapshot from one of the west’s longest military conflicts – and a narrative that explores the dynamics at play between civilians and military in a continually charged setting.

84

Against Everything: Essays, Mark Greif (Pantheon, 320 pp; $38.95)

The essays of Brooklyn literary magazine n+1 co-founder Mark Greif have been questioning our conventional wisdom for years (e.g. his exposure of foodies: “having had our food supply made simple, we devote ourselves to looking for ways to make it difficult.”) Collected in Against Everything, they provide a refreshing approach to intellectual dissent, if not its validation for our day and age.

83

Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett (Riverhead, 208 pp; $35)

Bennett’s unconventional book about an unnamed, reclusive narrator has gained international attention because of its distinct and sensual (not the gross kind) prose. While the stories from her life that would preoccupy a different book are vague and ephemeral here, the most minute impressions from her immediate world are instead held in sharp focus.

82

It’s hard to overstate Lucas’s impact on geek culture, if not pop culture entirely. Jones’s biography goes deep, revealing much about Lucas’s relationships with peers Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and others, as well as the fact that what Lucas really wanted to do was make “visual tone poems.”

81

There have been a number of entertaining memoirs from great female comedians in recent years, but Jessi Klein’s might be the most honest. Oddly, in the first chapter she reveals that her inner voice as a child sounded a lot like Daniel Stern from The Wonder Years.

80

Guglielmo Marconi conducted the first successful transatlantic radio transmission, Morse code between Newfoundland and England, and set the stage for much of how we communicate, conduct business, entertain ourselves – and live – today. Marc Raboy’s biography is a comprehensive look at a technological leviathan.

79

Sarah Glidden’s ground-breaking work is a graphic study of the relationship between journalists and their subjects – a new way of doing a documentary on conflict reporting, if you will. Rolling Blackouts is a nuanced and empathetic look at why (and how) we see what we see on the news.

78

Davidson’s memoir of driving a bus for special needs students in suburban Calgary is uplifting, enlightening, and funny – and importantly, a story of a special time in the author’s life. Fans of his harder-edged fiction won’t be sorry they followed the author along this route.

77

The fate of the Franklin expedition has long been one of the great fixations of the Arctic, and Potter, an acknowledged “Franklin junkie,” brings the generations of mostly heartbroken searchers to centre stage. To follow their footsteps is to follow in their footsteps.

76

A smash hit in its French-language publication, Pettersen’s novel (translated here by Neil Smith, author of last year’s Boo) is a daring coming-of-age novel widely felt to encapsulate a generation that came of age in 1990s Quebec.

75

Float, Anne Carson (McClelland & Stewart, 272 pp; $39.95)

The new poetry collection from one of Canada’s most mysterious and celebrated writers comes in the form of 22 chapbooks that can be read in any order. Oh – there’s a correct order. We just don’t know what it is. A lot of us feel that way about poetry in general, but that’s no reason not to read it.

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